Contents

Heder was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, the son of Helen (née Brammer) and Dr. James Heder, a practicing physician. He has an identical twin brother,[2] Dan, as well as an older sister and brother, Rachel and Doug, and two younger brothers, Adam and Matt. Heder is the nephew by marriage of former NFLrunning back and WCAU sportscaster, Vai Sikahema.[3] Heder is of part Swedish descent.[4] Heder and his parents moved to Salem, Oregon, when he was about two years old.[5] He attended Walker Middle School in Salem and graduated from South Salem High School in 1996,[5] where he was on the swim team and was a member of the Drama Association.

A 2002 alumnus of Brigham Young University, Heder worked on the short CGI animated film "Pet Shop", written by Logan Deans, which earned a non-traditional animation student Emmy in 2005. After his movie career took off, he did not return to complete the work he started on the short, although his name does appear in the credits. While attending BYU he befriended Jared Hess and starred in Hess' short film Peluca, which was later expanded into Napoleon Dynamite. Peluca received rave reviews on the BYU campus after showing at a few college and local film festivals and competitions.

Heder's second turn at voice acting came in 2007 when he voiced the character of Chicken Joe, a surfing chicken, in the animated film Surf's Up. His first foray into web television was in the 2008 web series Woke Up Dead starring and produced by Heder.[7]Woke Up Dead is a web-based, live-action sci-fi comedy thriller about Drex, a twenty-something USC student who wakes up underwater in the bathtub one morning and suspects that he might be dead.

Heder and his twin brother, Dan, star together as villains in the fourth installment of the popular internet martial arts comedy series Sockbaby. Heder's performance in When in Rome was praised by New York Times critic A. O. Scott: "Jon Heder as a goofy street magician is the funniest of the bunch."[8] In 2012, Heder returned to the role that made him famous by supplying the voice of Napoleon Dynamite in the Fox Network animated series, Napoleon Dynamite, which debuted in January 2012. In 2013, Heder appeared in the music video for "On Top of the World" with numerous other Utah-based actors and musicians, and in 2014 he appeared in the music video for the Chromeo song "Old 45s".[9]

Heder has been married to Kirsten Bales since 2002. The couple met while they were studying at Brigham Young University. They have four children, one daughter named Evan, and two sons named Philip and Timothy. In July 2016, the couple announced that they were expecting another child.[10] They welcomed their fourth child, a daughter, on December 16 of the same year.